


L'Ombre de ton ombre

by hophophop



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 02:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/hophophop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>“I imagine you won’t miss this when you’re gone.”</em><br/>Alternate POV to a section in the middle of "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/916456">La Chanson des Vieux Amants</a>", which should be read before this one. No, seriously, don't read this until you've read language_escapes's story because 1. it's fantastic, and 2. this is spoilerific for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L'Ombre de ton ombre

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [La Chanson des Vieux Amants](https://archiveofourown.org/works/916456) by [language_escapes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/language_escapes/pseuds/language_escapes). 



On the first anniversary of the woman’s death, three jurisdictions deem her legally dead, and while that is patently meaningless for someone of her talents and resources, this time he knows what to look for, and there have been no political indications, no financial transactions, no evidence that she is anything but. The band of tension that has constrained his chest since he got on that plane eases slightly but the fist enclosing his heart clenches one more time. It has been ten years since he learned she never existed, the first person he’d ever loved, but only now does he feel she is truly gone. It has been one year since he left the bees, and he expects they have forgotten him or at least filled the gap his absence created. He knows they have struggled and prospered, are moving forward, moving on. He spends many hours gazing at the roof of the brownstone captured on satellite photos in online mapping sites. It’s all still there; no one would notice he is not.

On the second anniversary of the woman’s death, he waits for DNA results to confirm the person in question is not the woman resurrected. He has been waiting seventeen hours and it is getting harder to breathe calmly as his lungs strain to hyperventilate in panic that he failed, that the bees are in danger, that he may never see them again. One hundred and thirty seven minutes more until he is convinced that the samples are not a match. As he waits for his heart rate to return to normal, he finally sinks into trance, no longer induced by a repeated word but rather an imagined scene: He is on the bench with his back to the hives watching the _Apis mellifera watsonia_ at work in the raised beds, spearmint and cosmos and sunflowers and echinacea swaying and bobbing in the late afternoon breeze. Someone slides onto the bench beside him and sets down two glasses of iced tea. He half-stands to tear off two mint leaves and drops one in each. The glasses are raised and gently tapped together before the first sip. The bees hum.

On the third anniversary of the woman’s death, he clutches the wrinkled and rolled pages of the article on _Apis mellifera watsonia_ to his chest as he lies on the rough worn bedspread in his dark hotel room, eyes screwed shut and wet streaks cooling his face. Jacques Brel pleads through the tinny speakers of the cheap clock radio. The bees don’t need him but oh he misses them. Longs to see them, watch them work, sit with them and breathe with them and feel that rare gentle touch when one alights. He should have been more deliberate, planned more carefully how to determine when it was safe to return. Of course he always planned to return, but now the bees are there and he is not and he doesn’t know how much longer he can bear it. Doesn’t know how much longer he must bear it. He was a fool not to have more clearly defined a means of assessment, a method to test when his presence would no longer put them at risk of harm. He can’t bear it. _Ne me quitte pas_.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the last stanza of Brel's "Ne me quitte pas." In english, _your shadow's shadow_.


End file.
